The last two times we were in Orlando, we picked up these catnip toys. Arby and Alex both loved them so much.

We’d gotten them catnip toys in Holland but they were totally not interested – for them it was the American stuff or nothing.

Last week we spent an afternoon at Downtown Disney. We looked for the Good Kitty / Bad Kitty nip toys but could only find these new ones.

We’re still unpacking from the trip and these were sitting in a bag downstairs. I noticed Arby rooting around in the bag – when I checked, I found the toys. We’d forgotten about them so Arby found them himself!

It’s still good stuff. Disney catnip is the best!

This is cool: Google Maps has added Street View of selected areas of Disneyland Paris. You can now ‘walk’ through Main Street, other parts of Disneyland, Disney Village and the Walt Disney Studios Park. Pretty neat!

What better photo for Friday the 13th than this spooky picture of Halloween at Disneyland Paris. The Mark Twain Riverboat is being pulled around Big Thunder Mountain by a huge floating ghost. The fog makes the creepy scene complete. The imagineers do an amazing job of decorating the park for Halloween each year. I took this picture on our visit in October 2003. The Mark Twain is based on the Anaheim park’s original riverboat attraction and is one of two riverboats at Frontierland in Disneyland Paris. Together with the Molly Brown it circles Big Thunder Mountain and Wilderness Island along sights of the Far West.

After our visit to Space Expo today we also stopped by the European Sand Sculptures Festival on the boulevard in Noordwijk to see the sand sculptures. This year’s theme is In Celebration of Disney and there were eight sand sculptures based on Disney animated feature films. Some were better than others. WALL-E, Sleeping Beauty and Narnia were by far the nicest, and they were also awarded with 1st, 2nd and 3rd place respectively. Here are some pictures:

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This is my favorite picture of the week. Woody from Toy Story watches Space Shuttle Discovery lifting off on May 31st with Buzz Lightyear onboard, finally fulfilling the toy’s dream of going into space. The 12-inch action figure is visiting the International Space Station this week along on mission STS-124 as part of a new educational partnership between NASA and the Walt Disney Company and to commemorate the opening of Toy Story Mania! at Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

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We finally had a chance to see Ratatouille yesterday. All the excellent reviews I read in anticipation while waiting for the Dutch release of this film were true; it was another Pixar masterpiece! Rotten Tomatoes has 156 favorable reviews, against just 6 rotten, making it one of the best films of the year. I hope Ratatouille will, like Beauty and the Best, receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. I think it deserves it.

Last month we visited Disneyland Resort Paris (DLP) for two days. The park is celebrating its 15-year anniversary with new shows, new attractions and new decorations. Unfortunately they did not take the opportunity to improve the dining experience at the parks, which remains dismal. More »

From 21 to 24 June 2007 we went to France. We first spent two days at Disneyland Paris where we stayed at Santa Fe Hotel. Then we went to Paris on Saturday and Sunday where we stayed at Hotel de la Porte Doree and visited Musée d’Orsay and Bois de Vincennes. Here are a few photos of our trip.

To view larger photos visit our photo album.

Park World has a very cool report with figures for theme park attendance over 2006. Eight of the top ten parks are Disney; Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom tops the list with 16,640,000 visitors. I was also surprised to see that Disneyland Paris wasn’t doing all that bad at number five in the world with 10,600,000 visitors, just ahead of Epcot’s 10,460,000. More »

These last weeks I have been working on my site Disney Comics Worldwide (which I’ve had since 1995). DCW is a popular website with information on Disney comics and magazines from around the world. I’ve completely updated the design and user interface and added new functionality here and there. I’ve optimised the source code by moving from a table-based design to CSS-based DIV boxes that are positioned relatively on the page. More »